This piece ultimately concerns Ben Webster, but it requires setup. The setup has to do with books.<\/p>\n
The book discussion group to which I belong operates a bit unconventionally. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use outlines or lesson plans. There is no discussion leader. We are a sort of freewheeling literary cooperative. Sometimes, the discussion goes far afield from the book at hand, although we usually manage to get back to it. We laugh a lot. We live in one of the great wine producing regions of the world, so we drink wine\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmoderately, of course\u00e2\u20ac\u201das we discuss the book at hand. There are eight of us, four men, four women, none married to one of the others. We alternate meeting at one another\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s houses. The host provides the wine, coffee and dessert. Ordinarily, we select a slate of six or eight books for the coming year. Last year, this was the list:<\/p>\n
The Conservationist<\/em>: Nadine Gordimer This time around, we are devoting an entire year to James Joyce\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ulysses<\/em>. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only fair; it took Joyce nine years to write it. Last night, in addition to discussing the book, we watched an installment of the 1967 Irish film of Ulysses<\/em> <\/a>starring Milo O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Shea as Leopold Bloom. Then, we had coffee and dessert. As we ate, I noticed that the host had on a table next to my chair a copy of the CD box set of Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940<\/em><\/a>. He saw me staring at it as lustfully as Blazes Boylan contemplating Molly Bloom and asked if there was something I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to hear. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My God,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of the women said about halfway through, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as if he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a horn, as if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just breathing the music.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n A good deal has been written about that imperishable tenor saxophone solo, but I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine a finer description of it. Joyce couldn’t have put it better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This piece ultimately concerns Ben Webster, but it requires setup. The setup has to do with books. The book discussion group to which I belong operates a bit unconventionally. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use outlines or lesson plans. There is no discussion leader. We are a sort of freewheeling literary cooperative. Sometimes, the discussion goes far afield […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe Moviegoer<\/em>: Walker Percy
\nLight in August<\/em>: William Faulkner
\nMy Name is Red<\/em>: Orhan Pamuk
\nThe Canterbury Tales<\/em>: Geoffrey Chaucer
\nRobinson Crusoe<\/em>: Daniel Defoe
\nKim<\/em>: Rudyard Kipling\/Candide<\/em>: Voltaire (a twofer)
\nWise Blood<\/em>: Flannery O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Connor<\/p>\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ben Webster playing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcStar Dust,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He put it on.<\/p>\n